THE BIBLICAL ENCYCLOPAEDIA LIBRARY founded by the Board of Editors of the ENCYCLOPAEDIA MIQRA’IT (ENCYCLOPAEDIA BIBLICA)

General Editor: Shmuel Ah. ituv Copy-editing and Production: Geula Cohen

XXVIII

ISBN 978-965-536-055-4 # Copyright by the Bialik Institute, Jerusalem 2011 Typeset by Leshon Limudim Ltd., Jerusalem www.bialik-publishing.co.il Printed in Israel

LITERACY IN ANCIENT ISRAEL

by Aaron Demsky

The Bialik Institute, Jerusalem

Contents

Abstract

x-xiv

Preface

7-11

List of Abbreviations List of Illustrations INTRODUCTION 1. TOWARDS A DEFINITION OF LITERACY

14-17 18 1-60 4

a. Reading and/or writing 5 b. Ancient terminology 6 c. Illiteracy 8 d. Gradations of literacy 10 2. DIFFERENT APPROACHES FOR THE STUDY OF LITERACY 11

a. Classical prophecy and oral composition 13 b. Educational institutions in the biblical period 18 c. Epigraphic contribution 26 d. Aarchaeological approach 28 e. Sociological approach 33 f. Comparing ancient Greece 40 3. METHODOLOGY

51

a. Problem of the sources 52 b. Defining the chronological boundaries 53 c. The biblical period defined by epigraphic evidence 54 CHAPTER 1:

Scribal Culture in the Ancient Near East 1. DEFINING SCRIBAL CULTURE

61-93 61

2. THE SCRIBES, THEIR EDUCATION AND PROFESSIONAL INSTITUTIONS 65

a. The scribal school in Mesopotamia 68 b. Literati who were not scribes 72

3. LISTENERS AND READERS

78

a. Types of texts 78 b. Methods of composition, transmission and preservation 80 c. Readers and listeners 82 d. The gods as readers and listeners 84 4. SENSE OF CLASS SUPERIORITY

87

a. Honor and material benefit 87 b. Eternity 89 c. Antiquity of writing and its divine manifestations 89

CHAPTER 2:

Creating a Literate Society

95-129

1. BACKGROUND FOR THE FORMATION OF WIDE SPREAD LITERACY 95 2. C O N D I T I O N S F O R T H E S P R E A D O F L I T E R A C Y I N ANTIQUITY 98

a. Technical facility 100

b. Removal of social barriers 113

3. INFLUENCE OF THE ALPHABET ON THE PHOENICIANS AND THE ARAMEANS 118

a. The Phoenician mercantile society b. The Aramaic language and script 122

CHAPTER 3:

The Israelite Scribe and the Upper Class Literati 131-168 1. THE ISRAELITE SCRIBAL CLASS AND OLDER PATTERNS OF LITERACY 132

a. Egyptian model 133

b. Canaanite model 138

2. LITERATI IN THE ISRAELITE TRIBAL FRAMEWORK

a. ‘Patriarchal period’ 142 b. Days of the Judges 3. ROYAL SCRIBES

a. Ministers 148

140

142 148

b. Sages 152 c. Minor bureaucracy 154

4. THE UPPER CLASS LITERATI IN THE TIME OF THE MONARCHY 157

a. Israelite Kings 160 b. Aristocratic women 165

CHAPTER 4:

Formal Education

169-211

1. ELEMENTARY EDUCATION

171

a. Learning the alphabet 171 b. Writing personal names 183 c. Learning encyclopedic lists 184 d. Arithmetic 188 e. Writing contracts 190 f. Drawing up legal documents 192 g. Writing letters 193 2. ADVANCED EDUCATION

194

a. Learning foreign languages 196 b. Diplomatic procedures 198 c. Mathematics 200 d. Military logistics 201 e. Engineering 202 f. Cartography and preparation of building plans 203 3. EDUCATION IN THE ROYAL ISRAELITE COURT

a. Education of the Kings’ sons and courtiers 205 literature and the ethics of the Scribes 207

204

b. Court

CHAPTER 5:

Writing and Israelite Religion 1. PRIESTHOOD

a. Priestly education 2. BIBLICAL THEOLOGY

213-278 217

218 b. Epigraphic finds 220 224

a. Between the faith of the Fathers and the religion of Moses 224 b. Theology of the covenant 227 c. At Mount Sinai 227 d. The written covenant 232 e. Commandments to write, read and study the Torah 237

3. ISRAELITE CULT

240

a. Ark of the Covenant 240 b. High Priest’s inscribed garments 243 c. Sot.ah ceremony 245 d. Haqhel ceremony 246 e. Written texts on the doorposts 247 e. Wearing inscribed apparel 250 4. WRITING PROPHETS

253

a. Preservation and verification 254 b. Communication 255 c. Learning and examples 257 d. Creating literature 257 e. Literate prophets 259 f. Literate enemies of the prophets 261 g. Earlier literary sources 262 h. Command to write prophecy 264 i. Learning exercises in prophecy 268 j. Alphabetic structure in the Book of Lamentations 270 5. HOLY SCRIPTURE IN CHRISTIANITY AND IN ISLAM

275

CHAPTER 6:

Measuring the Extent of Literacy

279-324

1. FROM PICTURE TO THE WRITTEN WORD

a. Personal seals 282 LMLK sealings 289

b. Inscribed weights 284

281

c. The

2. VULGAR SCRIPT

291

3. LITERATE ARTISANS

294

a. Seal engravers 294 b. Stone engravers 296 c. Merchants 299 d. Potters 300 e. Ivory joiners 302 f. Builders 302 g. Vintners and grape growers 303 4. WRITING PROPHETS – BRINGING TEXTS BEFORE THE MASSES 306 5. CRITIQUE OF WRITING

a. Classical Greece 312 c. Prophetic literature 316

310

b. Rabbinic literature 314

6. WRITING IN LEGAL PROCEDURES

318

CHAPTER 7:

The Formation of the People of the Book during the Early Persian period 325-360 1. HISTORIC FRAMEWORK

327

a. Literary genres 327 b. Family genealogies c. Ascendance of the priestly class 331 2. EZRA THE SCRIBE AND HIS WORKS

329

335

a. Public Torah reading b. Inner-biblical exegesis 340 c. Foreign wives 343 d. Building a sukkah 346 e. Chronicler’s midrash 348 f. Making a covenant (amanah) 352

EPILOGUE

361-374

1. TWO ALPHABETIC SCRIPTS

361

2. CANONIZING THE BIBLE

363

3. THE SEPTUAGINT

366

4. SECTARIAN LITERATURE

371

5. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

371

a. Literacy as a general social phenomenon b. Literacy in ancient Israel

373

Bibliography

375-468

Index of Sources

469-489

Abstract

The Introduction deals with the definition of literacy, its terminology and gradation in antiquity, as well as in contemporary scholarship. The ability to write a word of even two letters constitutes basic literacy and testifies to the fact that an individual adopted the medium of writing to express oneself. This is followed by a critical survey of various approaches to the understanding of literacy in the biblical period, such as literary composition and transmission, educational institutions, epigraphic evidence, archaeological context, political motivations reflected in biblical historiography, sociological models, and the comparison with Greek society in the Archaic and Classical periods. A basic assumption is that all writing cultures in antiquity fall into one of two patterns: restricted scribal culture as found in Mesopotamia and Egypt, and unrestricted literacy as in Israel and ancient Greece, which became literate societies. Methodological issues are raised through a review of sources and chronology. It is suggested that the datable epigraphic evidence of the evolving alphabetic script can be applied to understand the historical background of biblical narrative. Actually, the all-encompassing subject of literacy has to be studied not only synchronically but also diachronically, noting the technical, social and cultural processes that began with the invention of writing at the end of the fourth millennium BCE and culminated at the end of Antiquity. Chapter 1. Scribal Culture in the Ancient Near East: Scribal culture was limited to a well-defined class of literati who shared similar educational institutions and professional goals. These included a similarly structured school faculty and standard curriculum as well as methods of composition,

preservation and transmission of school texts. The literary output was composed for the benefit, edification and enjoyment of a restricted audience of professional literati including three Mesopotamian royals. Supplementing their limited readership, the scribes created an imaginary audience of readers and listeners among the gods and conveyed the message that scribes would be the beneficiaries of power, material wealth and acclaim in pursuing the eternal art of writing, a manifestation of the divine. Chapter 2. Creating a Literate Society: Three factors go into making a literate society, where literacy is potentially within the grasp of the layman, and not restricted to a professional scribal class: (1) technical facility of the script, which evolved into a standardized twenty-two-letter Canaanite alphabet at the end of the Late Bronze and beginning of the Early Iron Ages; (2) the removal of social barriers such as occurred with the breakdown of the feudal kingdoms administered by the scribal class; (3) the social or cultural catalyst that stimulates the spread of literacy in a specific society. In Phoenicia it was the mercantile drive triggered in part by trade in Egyptian papyrus. The benefits inherent in the Canaanite alphabet for communication, storage of data and shaping history and thought hastened the distribution of papyrus as the common writing surface in the eastern Mediterranean. For the spread of Aramaic and its alphabetic script, the catalyst was the Assyrian Empire’s need for an efficient bureaucracy employing a facile medium to act as an instrument of conquest and dominion. As shown in chapter 5, it was Israelite monotheism that infused new meaning into the medium of writing. Chapter 3. The Israelite Scribe and the Upper Class Literati: While there was no scribal monopoly on writing in ancient Israel, there was a scribal class serving in the government administration. To some extent it was influenced by the

scribal cultures of Egypt and Mesopotamia channeled through Canaanite models adopted by the Israelites. This class can be subdivided into Cabinet ministers, Sages (h.akhamim) and the minor bureaucracy. Two other upper class groups seem to be literate as well: the Israelite king and his household, as reflected mostly in the biblical sources, and aristocratic women, as noted mostly from epigraphic sources. Chapter 4. Formal Education: Since there is no direct evidence of formal education in biblical Israel – nor even a term for ‘‘school’’ – evidence has been sought mainly through comparison with contemporary societies in the Ancient Near East or extrapolation from the Hebrew Wisdom literature, and to a lesser extent, deduction from epigraphic evidence. This chapter identifies both the biblical and the epigraphic data that provide evidence for a standardized elementary curriculum teaching the rudiments of reading and writing, and a course of study for the advanced scribe. In addition, there is an examination of education in the Israelite court and the ethics of the Scribes as reflected in the Book of Proverbs. Chapter 5. Writing and Israelite Religion demonstrates the centrality of writing in biblical monotheism as conceived in ancient Israel. It opens with the priesthood and notes the appearance of a national literature written for and about the Israelite people. Especially salient are those particular literary aspects of Israelite monotheism such as the influence of the vassal treaty formulation on the Sinai covenant and the Book of the Covenant. These written texts shaped the theology of revelation and the idea of the Divine presence symbolized by the Ark of the Covenant in the desert sanctuary and in the Jerusalem Temple containing the engraved tablets.

Writing manifests itself in the official cult, particularly in the inscribed High Priest’s vestments – shoulder epaulets, head-band and breast plate with its twelve engraved seals that empowered him in representing the people – and is employed in the trial of the suspected adulterous wife (sot.ah) and in the haqhel ceremony featuring the public reading of the Torah every seven years. It is fortuitous that the formation of the national institutions and the attributed appearance of Israelite monotheism occurred in the same period when the potentially powerful medium of the twentytwo letter Canaanite alphabet was standardized. Classical prophets of the 8th-5th centuries BCE were expected to write their prophecies in order to publicize the divine message. Through their writings, they exploited the spread of literacy to imbue the medium of writing with religious, social, and literary import, bringing their message to a larger audience and enhancing the national literature. This literature took both oral and written forms. The contemporary Book of Lamentations illustrates alphabetic thinking in its acrostic structure as well as in the suggested at-bash-influenced construction of chapters 1 and 2. This section concludes with an aside noting the later influence of Holy Writ on Early Christianity and Islam, the daughter monotheistic faiths that adopted the idea of written revelation evolving into competing canons called the New Testament and the Quran. Chapter 6. Measuring the Extent of Literacy: Extrapolating from models taken from traditional or pre-modern societies, different scholars come to the mutually exclusive conclusions that there was very limited popular literacy or that there was widespread literacy. Since there are no universal or objective tools for measuring literacy in pre-modern societies, the datable biblical sources and increased number of epigraphic texts from the 8th century BCE onwards have been examined

for evidence of popular literacy. Six criteria for widespread literacy have been discerned: (1) the written word replacing or clarifying a picture or symbol; (2) vulgar script; (3) craftsman’s literacy among artisans, tradesmen and farmers; (4) public presentations of written documents by the Writing Prophets; (5) critique of writing or of the scribal class; (6) writing in legal procedures. Chapter 7. The Formation of the People of the Book during the Early Persian Period: The Persian period saw the flowering of a variety of literary genres, some traditional, others novel. Other aspects of popular literacy were an interest in and need for written family genealogies and census lists as well as the ubiquitous distribution of inscribed coinage. The priesthood gained ascendancy not only politically but also in its spiritual capacity as the authorative interpreters of the Torah. Ezra the Scribe, the dominant historical figure of the times, reshaped Israelite monotheism from a Temple-centered sacrificial service to a book-centered one based on communal Torah reading and its interpretation. He was instrumental in shaping the community through a written social contract (amanah) rooted in Torah, reformulating the cardinal religious idea of the covenant. Epilogue: Literary developments which began under the Persian Empire characterized the later Second Temple period: (1) two competing Hebrew alphabet scripts – the Old Hebrew/Samaritan form and the Jewish/square form; (2) the canonization of the Bible; (3) biblical translation – the Septuagint and conflict with the Hellenistic world writing in Greek; (4) the rise of sectarian literature through the reinterpretation of the Bible.